Monday, December 10, 2012

Having said how appalling Chiltern Trains have become, I tried Virgin instead just days after Richard Branson's outfit won a two-year extension to its franchise.

How anyone could travel on this line is beyond me. Quite apart from the fact that all Virgin trains stink because their loos are basically insanitary, the price is beyond comprehension.

Second class return from Birmingham International to Euston (including car parking, admittedly) is a staggering £166.

It's not worth £20.

The outward journey was OK but when we reached Coventry on the way back the five carriages filled up so much it was standing room only for dozens of people.

So crammed was the train that I feared I might not actually get to the exit door in time before the train moved on.

As for everyone trying to get on the train at Birmingham International having been to the Clothes Show at the NEC, they were treated like refugees or Japanese commuters. I'm surprised there wasn't some Virgin operative employed to shove and push them all on board so the doors would close.

Why does anyone love Richard Branson? His rip-off railway is a bad joke.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

It's standing room only - yet again - on the Chiltern Trains service to London. What happened to this railway? A few years ago it was the best way from Birmingham to London. Now it's overcrowded, expensive and unreliable.

Today I tried to park at Warwick Parkway's new car park and almost crashed the car because they had not bothered to treat the top floor, which is open to the elements, despite the icy conditions.

I slipped across the top floor to the stairs lucky and thankful I didn't come a cropper and then had to pay £101.50 for a return ticket to Marylebone. That's because the train left before 9am. About five minutes before. But it stopped at Leamington Spa, we were all kicked off and told to wait for the next (cheaper, overcrowded) train.

So here we all are, crammed in like sardines and ripped off to boot. Strangely there is no ticket collector. No doubt they will blame staff shortages but the truth is they don't have the courage to face carriages- full of unhappy passengers.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Press freedom is under
threat. Politicians, business leaders and a whole host of celebrities are
desperate for more laws to bring the beast to heel.

This powerful coalition claims
newspapers have run wild for too long.

But, with a few notable
exceptions, show me a critic of the press and I will show you a hypocrite with
something to hide.

It’s true that what is in
the public interest is not necessarily what interests the public. We all like a
bit of gossip but that’s not a good defence of press freedom.

Yet there is a fine line
between tittle-tattle and holding our governing elite to account.

They may class some of their
activities as private – but at what point is it reasonable for a public figure
to close the door on “press intrusion”?

Many public figures spend
years courting the press, opening up to journalists about the most intimate
aspects of their lives, in the hope of selling more CDs, books and films,
winning votes or gaining power.

The rich and powerful are
always in danger of being carried away by their own publicity and assuming the
public interest and their own interests are identical.

When their failings are
exposed, they turn on the people they courted for so long.

They blame the press when
their marriages break down, they get arrested for breaking the law, they lose
an election or they bankrupt one of the biggest banks in the world.

True, newspapers
occasionally cross the line between what we have a right to know and what we
might like to know.

But sometimes it’s only then
that newspapers reveal the deeper truths about those who would command our
support, our respect, our attention and our money.

The long list of
phone-hacking “victims” who queued up to condemn the press at the Leveson
inquiry is a veritable Who’s Who of the rich and famous.

The truth is, though, that
phone hacking, like bribing police officers, is illegal. It does not require
new legislation to stop it.

All that’s needed is for law
enforcers to do their job. Sadly, rather like the watchdogs which failed to
regulate the British banking system, they have been caught napping.

There is no reason to
destroy the press simply because some people – and it remains to be seen who
they might be – have broken the law.

As a nation, we are lucky to
enjoy a free press – and by “press” I do mean newspapers.

TV and radio are different.
Don’t look to them to expose the next MPs’ expenses fiasco, for instance. And
don’t expect them to break news about scandals at your local council or your
local hospital.

The press is not free, of
course. It is hedged in with laws governing what can and cannot be said, and
when.

That’s one reason why you
can believe what you read in the papers. We have to tread carefully to make
sure we get our facts right.

We have to ensure we are not
libelling someone, we’re not in contempt of court or maybe breaking a secret
superinjunction.

And there is more to freedom
of the press than the ability to delve into the lives of people who would lord
it over us.

A free press is the
cornerstone of a free society. Once Governments or their placemen decide what
you may or may not read, democracy itself is on the slide.

We in Britain take our freedom for
granted. We don’t worry about it. We don’t fight for it. Often, we don’t even
use it – most of us didn’t vote in the elections for police commissioners, for
instance.

Yet it’s no coincidence that
this is one of only two countries in Europe which enjoyed uninterrupted
democracy for the whole of the 20th century (the other was Sweden).

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

How can anyone seriously think of imposing new regulations on the press when the broadcasting media are out of control and the internet is anarchy?

MPs are queuing up to back a legal body to oversee the press – a form of censorship more common in France or some totalitarian state like China or Nazi Germany.

This they see as their chance for revenge against newspapers which exposed the all-party Parliamentary expenses scandal.

They are rubbing their hands in anticipation that Lord Justice Leveson will call for legal restraints on the alleged freedom of the press.

David Cameron set up the Leveson Inquiry to investigate a non-crime – the supposed hacking of murdered 13-year-old Millie Dowler’s phone by a “News of the World” reporter.

It’s now accepted the offence probably never took place. Yet the inquiry pressed on regardless. Talk about "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story".

In 12 months it cost taxpayers almost £4 million, mostly in lawyers’ fees.

The final bill will much more and will include fees for “participant victims” including Sienna Miller, Max Clifford, Ulrika Jonsson, Abi Titmuss, JK Rowling and Charlotte Church.

Self-righteous “martyrs and victims” like the hilarious Steve Coogan and the clean-living Max Mosley were joined by the versatile Hugh Grant and the peace-loving John Prescott.

They were all given red carpet treatment not just by Lord Justice Leveson but also by the BBC, which revelled in its coverage of how awful the newspapers – especially Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers – really were.

Things took an embarrassing turn when Mr Cameron became personally embroiled through his close friendship with ex-News International boss Rebecca Brooks.

However, recent events have made it abundantly clear how irrelevant Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry really is.
The BBC has not been the same since Alastair Campbell and Lord Hutton crushed it over the Blair Government’s sexed-up dossier used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The Corporation’s editorial independence was bullied and beaten into submission, replaced by a pointless desire to win the ratings war.

Hence the supine abandonment of “Newsnight’s” investigation into Jimmy Savile and the perverse attempt to make up for it by wrongly identifying Lord McAlpine as a paedophile.

You can’t get much more messed-up than the BBC these days – unless, of course, you are ITV’s Phillip Schofield confronting the Prime Minister with a list of alleged paedophiles gleaned from three minutes on the internet.

This desperate stunt on “This Morning” meant some of the names could be read by viewers – talk about “trial by television”.

The point is, though, that both “Newsnight” and Schofield relied on the rumour, gossip, innuendo and nonsense of the internet to do their dirty work for them.

That’s because, on the world wide web, anything goes. Many people who witter and twitter have no idea they are subject to the same laws and limits as newspapers.

They don’t realise they can be sued for libel or fined for naming rape victims – as nine twits discovered the hard way when they were each fined £624.

If a newspaper editor named a rape victim, he would be fined far more and might well get sacked.

If you suggest there should be some limits placed on what you can say via the internet, you get accused of supporting censorship.

There is no doubt the web has given us all more opportunity to express opinions, discuss issues and learn from others.

And there’s no need for new regulations affecting the web any more than there is for newspapers.
Existing laws are available to deal with all the abuses found on the internet. They just aren’t enforced.

Passing off rumour and gossip as fact, or drawing other people’s attention to innuendos and suggestions, are not tolerated in print; why are they acceptable on the internet?

Contrary to popular myth, you can believe what you read in the papers. This is because they have gone to great lengths to get their facts right.

If newspapers get it wrong, they’ll be tens of thousands out of pocket, journalists will be out on the streets and their reputation will be trashed.

You cannot possibly trust much of what you find on the internet. Even sites like Wikipedia are distorted, biased, censored or otherwise “cleaned up”, often by celebrities or their PR teams.

Can you trust broadcasters? The BBC used to be the great bastion of truth; it will take years to recover that reputation.

Newspapers are not paragons of virtue. They do get it wrong sometimes. They have been known to over-step the mark, target innocent people, harass politicians and so on.

But their worst excesses pale into insignificance beside the everyday law-breaking on the internet.

Trying to close a few stable doors after the phone-hacking horse has bolted is irrelevant compared with the urgent need to tackle the abuse spreading like a virus across the internet.

Lord Justice Leveson and his band of bitter backers are busily trying to blunt the newspapers’ sword of truth while ignoring the lethal spray from the internet’s machine-gun of lies.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Went to see The Killers last week at the NEC and they were
good. Went to see Bellowhead at the Leamington Spa Assembly Rooms last night
and they were great.

They’re just fantastic fun – an 11-piece folk band with all
manner of instruments and invention not to mention energy and enthusiasm.

The venue is good – standing room only, everyone near
enough the stage to see what’s going on (and there’s always lots going on),
sound good but not deafening.

All in all, I would go again tonight if they were on and tomorrow.
It’s like listening to a riotous circus in full swing. I don’t care what kind
of music you like or how old you are, I defy you not to enjoy an evening of
Bellowhead.

What I think Bellowhead must concentrate on now is a Christmas
album. All those traditional festive tunes are perfect for that Bellowhead magic.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The trouble is that the disappearance of old-fashioned sub-editors from newspapers and websites - yes I do mean you, Daily Mail - means you get a serious of extremely basic journalistic errors more or less every day. This is getting series.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

If you pick the right day
for your Christmas shopping, you might be lucky enough to get to park your car
for free.

Across the Black
Country and further afield, councils are scurrying around trying
to come up with special free parking deals to boost their town centres for the
festive spending spree.

So if you plan to go
late-night shopping in Stourbridge or Walsall,
shop around and you might save yourself £2.50 in parking costs.

The same applies for most of
the Saturdays in December.

Councils seem to think that
cutting the cost of parking on the busiest shopping days of the whole year will
somehow keep their ailing town centres in business for another 12 months.

Their attitude is that they
are doing us a tremendous favour by suspending charges for a few days.

Councillor Judy Foster, who
is responsible for transport in Dudley, pretty
much said as much.

"The suspension of car
park charges is seen as a goodwill gesture on behalf of the council and an
added incentive for shoppers to visit the borough on the run up to
Christmas," she declared magnanimously.

A goodwill gesture?
"Goodwill towards whom?" you may well ask.

Is this free parking
supposed to be a Christmas present to hard-pressed shoppers from their generous
local authorities?

Can it really be the case
that local authorities still don't realise they are systematically killing off
their town centres?

If they had any good sense,
never mind goodwill, they would realise their policy of trying to stop us from
using our cars was a major factor in the long, slow, painful decline of Britain's High
Streets.

Maybe not as short-sighted
as giving permission for out-of-town retail parks and superstores but every
little helps.

It is no exaggeration to say
many town centres are caught in an agonising death spiral. And parking charges
are one of the reasons why.

So is the internet. Why
bother to go to one of the last remaining CD or book shops when you can
download the same thing from the comfort of your own home?

Why traipse round clothes
shops when you can order what you want on line and send it back if it doesn't
fit?

To make matters worse, many
shop landlords bought their properties at the height of the boom.

Now they are stuck with
half-empty rows of buildings which are declining in value. So they increase the
rents.

That, in turn, prices some
retailers out of the market altogether. Small shopkeepers and national chains
are both caught by declining sales and rising rents.

This madness leads to more
and more charity shops, which don’t pay business rates, and boarded-up
buildings.

Things have got so bad Britain's
shopkeepers have now set up the Distressed Retail Property Taskforce.

The British Council of
Shopping Centres, the British Retail Consortium and the Property Bankers’ Forum
plan to spend six months trying to find a way out of this crisis.

Councils should be involved
as well. For decades they have seen their biggest shopping centres as
lucrative, pain-free sources of revenue.

Business rates and
car-parking charges have helped fund many a spendthrift local authority.

Yet with so many shopping
centres are in terminal decline, the best they can manage is an occasional
"goodwill gesture" for a day or two before Christmas.

The true attitude of local
councils is summed up in a recent report for Wolverhampton Council.

It says: "The Council
also has a responsibility to promote economic development and regeneration in
the City Centre and it recognises that the provision of accessible, high
quality car parking is an important factor in the economic success of the
City."

So far, so good. But then it
says: "At the same time, the Council needs to promote the effectiveness
and use of public transport to reduce the reliance on cars and to limit the
creation of more car parking spaces."

This attitude would be fine
if shopping centres were booming. But they are not. Half the time, they're
virtually deserted.

Don't be fooled by the
pre-Christmas crush. It's not usually like this. Councils should be haunted by
the fear that some of their centres are becoming ghost towns.

The "goodwill
gesture" of suspending parking charges in the run-up to Christmas clearly
shows councils believe these taxes play a part in deciding where people do
their shopping.

It proves they think free
parking is a key to boosting their town centres and, therefore, that they are
aware their charges deter shoppers. Actually, their policies set out
deliberately to alienate motorists.

The conclusion is obvious.
If they want to save their town centres, councils should invest in plentiful,
accessible, free car parking.

On its own this won't
reverse the decline but it would help. And it would give councils a chance to
cling on to the taxes and jobs lost every time another shop closes. The cost of
lost parking revenue is nothing compared with the high price of longer-term
decline.

Councils should realise free
parking is for life, not just for Christmas.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

It’s taken a long time but Gisela Stuart has at last come round to the view that we’d be better off out of the EU. For a German-born Labour MP who was a member of the committee which drew up Europe’s constitution, that’s quite a turnaround. Let’s hope some of her colleagues listen to her words of wisdom and experience.

Roads for the rich

Road
tolls rear their ugly heads again under a new plan to force motorists to pay
more for using motorways. Amazing how one Government’s least popular plans come
to be the next Government’s bright idea. Petrol tax – though it’s too high – is
already the best way of raising money from motorists because the bigger your
car and the further you travel, the more you pay.

What election and why?

Usually
I’d support anything which enlarged democracy – but not in the case of the
elections for police chiefs. I’ve had two emails from the Home Secretary urging
me to vote but not one word through the letterbox about who the candidates
actually are. Why is anybody going to bother to vote? Who are the candidates?
What are the differences between them? What real power will they have? What
good will they do? Who knows? Yes they have manifestos, some represent parties
and they all have lots to say. But this is an election nobody wants and nobody
cares about. And I don’t blame them.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

After Dudley and Birmingham
councils are banned from using the DVLA database because of widespread abuse,
when are we going to wake up to this fact that Big Brother is watching us at
every turn? What chance patient confidentiality once they compete a national
NHS database, for instance?

Puffed up

Every year or so, a group of self-appointed experts calls
for drug use to be made legal. These self-same do-gooders would outlaw
cigarette smoking, ban drink-drivers for life and impose a massive "fat
tax" on fast food. I fear they are probably right to say we lost the
"war on drugs" years ago. But if you legalise the use of drugs,
surely you have to make their supply legal too. And where do you draw the line
between "soft" and "hard" drugs?

Lions and donkeys

They couldn't run the armed forces. They wasted billions on
defence systems we don't need or don't work. Now they are hiring out their
services as lobbyists for foreign arms manufacturers. Are there no depths or
top brass won't sink to? We lost in Afghanistan years ago. Talk about
lions led by donkeys.

Welcome to the real
world

MPs should be encouraged to have jobs outside Parliament not
forced to give them up. A cap or even a ban on outside earnings would mean
simply more full-time professional politicians with less and less connection
with the real world. So much the worse for the rest of us.

Yes or no to in or
out?

The Tories can fiddle about all they like with with bits of
the EU but the only referendum worth its name would be a simple one: In or out?

Abandon ship

If they make that tedious twit Lord Turner, the euro-loving
ex-CBI boss, governor of the Bank of England we may as well all abandon ship
and move to Greece.

Do you still need them?

As we celebrate 50 years of the Beatles and the Stones
prepare for more concerts, we should rejoice that John, Paul, George and Ringo
gave up while the going was good. Anyone paying a grand to see the Stones must
have more money than sense.

When 700 people take to the streets in protest at a planning application, you'd think someone in authority might pay attention.
Alas for the residents of Hagley, their campaign is unlikely to make a blind bit of difference.
Hagley is just one of the early victims of the Government's planning free-for-all which will concrete over large swathes of countryside.
What baffles and enrages many people is that while the bulldozers prepare to dig up the Green Belt, nothing is done about the blighted, derelict wastelands we see all over the Black Country.
How can it possibly make sense for green fields to be turned into housing estates when there are hundreds of acres of brownfield land just begging to be reclaimed?
The people of Hagley are right to complain about the 175 houses to built on land sold to Cala homes by Lord Cobham.
Of course the development will put more pressure on schools and doctors and clog up the roads even more. That's what happens whenever and wherever new homes are built.
You can't really blame Lord Cobham for cashing in. It costs a fortune to run Hagley Hall and the family have been flogging off bits of the estate for decades.
The problem is that now, more than at any time since the post-war building boom, the planning system is entirely in favour of new development.
Nobody seems to care any longer where it should be allowed or who it should be for.
In its desperation to get the economy moving again, the Government is bending over backwards to accommodate the demands of property developers.
If they say they stand more chance of turning a profit by developing a green field than reclaiming some bomb site in Bilston then local councils are expected to roll over and play dead.
Indeed, the Government has created an incentive - some might call it a blatant bribe - to make sure local councils do as they are told.
It's called the New Homes Bonus and it was invented to prevent the policy of "localism" undermining Whitehall's plans to concrete over the countryside.
Localism is supposed to mean that decisions are no longer taken by anonymous civil servants and here-today-gone-tomorrow Ministers.
It's supposed to mean decisions are taken by local people for local people, in other words, by councillors.
But Ministers know that, left to their own devices, councillors can't be trusted to turn ploughshares into bulldozers.
Some councillors may get it into their heads that their job is to represent the views of the voters and that would never do.
So, while in theory regional planning policies have been scrapped, the truth is that the Government is pursuing the same old war by other means.
And one of those means is the New Homes Bonus.
Last year, councils trousered £432 million in New Homes Bonuses, which works out at £2,710 per new house built. And there's plenty more where that came from.
Thanks to this scam, Bromsgrove Council, which is responsible for deciding whether to back the Hagley homes plan, will make about £470,000 just for doing what the Government tells it to do.
Do not under-estimate the power of this sort of chicanery. Who knows? Maybe just before the next local elections, they'll announce plans to spend £200,000 on a new children's playground in Hagley and everybody will be suitably grateful.
Ironically, this policy was introduced by Grant Shapps when he was Minister for Housing. He has now been promoted to Chairman of the Conservative Party.
He definitely deserves that job because now he will have to try explaining his ludicrous housing development policies to the very Tories who will be most badly affected by them.
For, as we know, Conservatives tend to live in leafy parts like Hagley and I shouldn't be surprised to find a majority of those who took to the streets last Saturday had voted Tory at the last election.
And, of course, they are hardly unique. All over the West Midlands, Tory-voting settlements face unwanted expansion.
Yet the inner city areas which truly need reviving will continue to be neglected.
It's hardly surprising. If a developer can start with a clean sheet - a green field - it's much easier, quicker and cheaper to build a housing estate than it would be to reclaim the unwanted site of some former factory.
Yet in an era when everyone is supposedly committed to the environment, it's obvious which kind of development is "green".
The Government's job should be to make sure our millions are spent where they can do most good.
Places like Bromsgrove should actually lose money if they approve green-field developments while any bonuses should be devoted to helping developers clean up wasteland to make it suitable for new housing.
And then there are the half a million homes standing empty up and down the country - thousands of them owned by the very councils now succumbing to the Government's bribery.
Why not refurbish them and put them to good use before a single tree gets chopped down?

Monday, September 24, 2012

If you believe the hype, shoppers are delighted
that supermarkets and big stores are installing more and more self-service
checkouts.

The latest survey by the retail industry claims we
love the convenience of them – supposedly they’re quicker and we avoid long
queues.

The industry would have you believe these dreadful machines
are so popular we’ll all want to use them.

Apparently 95 per cent of us have negotiated our
way round self-service machines and endured the “unexpected item in the bagging
area” nonsense, suggesting the end is nigh for the checkout girls of Britain.

But look at the small print and you discover – even
in a survey for The Grocer magazine – 55 per cent of shoppers still prefer
dealing with people not machines.

Will our preference for people make any difference?
Of course it won’t.

The industry thinks that, as more and more shops
leave their tills unmanned and force customers to go self-service, we’ll grow
ever-more delighted with the triumph of machine over man.

The giant retailers – Sainsbury’s, Tesco, B&Q
and the rest of them – are profit-making enterprises which will do all they can
to reduce costs and boost profits.

In theory, that means retailers could axe three-quarters
of their checkout staff and still push through as many customers per day as
they do now.

I pity the staff at these stores. They have no
choice but to help impose checkout machines on their customers.

They have to explain why the scanner won’t work,
they have to authorise the sale of alcohol, they have to help when the card
machine refuses to accept payment and the computer whines about unexpected
items.

They could do all this for us if they were sitting
at a till. Instead, they have to brainwash us into thinking this system is
somehow a desirable improvement.

And all the time they know the more successful they
are in conning us into believing self-service checkouts represent the future of
retailing, the more likely it is they will soon be out of work.

The stores and even Usdaw, the shop-workers’ union,
claim this is not a cost-cutting exercise. We shall see.

Stephen
Robertson, director general of the British Retail Consortium, says: “I love
self-service checkouts in the same way I love ATMs, ‘pay at the pump’ and
airlines’ on-line check-ins.

“To me they mean
efficiency and speed and, as designers continue to make the technologies
friendlier, the balance is tipping ever-more firmly in their favour.”

In the immortal
words of Mandy Rice-Davies: “Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Admittedly I am a
Luddite. It’s not so much that I mistrust technology, it’s more that I mistrust
the people who try to force it on me.

You know for
certain that, whatever the drivel the industry pours over its self-serving
self-service checkout initiative, it’s all about cutting costs.

For years after
the banks introduced hole-in-the-wall cash machines, I made a point of walking
into the branch with a plain, old-fashioned cheque book and requesting my money
in the traditional way, from a girl behind the counter.

This went on
until the day when staff at my local Barclays, less than 100 yards from home,
demanded two forms of identification before they would let me have any cash.

I was stunned. A
simple cheque guarantee card wasn’t enough any longer. And they knew me anyway
– I lived just down the road.

I pointed out
that their approach was professional suicide – the more they forced customers
to use machines, the fewer bank clerks Barclays would need to employ.

But that, of
course, was the point. The staff at my local Barclays were not to blame. The
company had clearly adopted a policy of alienating Luddites and forcing us into
line.

Since then, I
have been forced to use a cash-point machine like everyone else. And I admit
they are convenient, quick and generally safe.

But I still
resent being made to participate in the banks’ conspiracy to cut costs – especially
when they could employ dozens of staff for the price of one crooked
speculator’s massive bonus.

The same pattern
is now being followed by big shops. The more D-I-Y checkouts they install, the
more difficult and time-wasting it becomes to queue up to deal with a human
being.

That forces us to
use the machines whether we want to or not. Now 95 per cent of us have used the
infernal things – I’m in the remaining five per cent – it’s only a short step
to getting rid of checkout staff completely.

And if they are so wonderful, why does John Hannett, General Secretary of Usdaw, point out that
“self-service checkouts have become another flashpoint that can lead to shop-workers
being abused, threatened and even physically assaulted”?

He says: “Frustrated
shoppers experiencing a problem using them can often take out their anger and
frustration on the nearest shop-worker and this is both unfair and
unacceptable.”

I decided some time
ago to boycott shops with self-service checkouts. But if it carries on like
this, I could be starved into submission.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Today I
received another of the many missives I get from Save the Children asking me to
increase my donations. At the moment, I have not cancelled my standing order
but I am now looking for a similar – but more worthwhile – recipient of my very
modest monthly standing order. Suggestions gratefully received.

Meanwhile,
here’s my e-mail correspondence with the alleged charity now run by Justin
Forsyth, Gordon Brown’s ex-spin doctor. It is no coincidence that the charity
is now campaigning about child poverty in this country.

e-mail to
Save the Children

I hear you
are embarking on a new campaign to relieve child poverty in the UK.

I have
sponsored kids through Save the Children for more than 30 years but I am so
outraged that they have descended into domestic politics I will cancel my
standing order.

Compared
with real poverty, there is nothing to get upset about. This is just a
calculated descent into politicking and I despise it.

Can you
offer me any reasons why I should not abandon Save the Children and transfer my
modest donations to a charity which knows the difference between genuine
poverty and the mild deprivations some children suffer in this country?

Yours
truly,

Nigel
Hastilow

Their reply:

Dear
Nigel

Thank you
for your email. I am extremely sorry to learn that our recent UK appeal has
led you to question your kind support of Save the Children.

It is
simply not the case that this is a political campaign. We have a long history
of challenging governments on the decisions they make that affect children and
Save the Children has also campaigned and worked to tackle UK poverty for
many years. Child poverty is an issue which all political parties need to act
urgently on and as a leading children's charity it is right that we speak out
on children's behalf - children who have told us how tough times are for them.

Save the
Children works anywhere in the world where we see injustice to inspire
breakthroughs for children; we save children’s lives, fight for their rights
and help them fulfil their potential. The UK is no exception. We believe no
child should live in poverty or have their life chances ruined by deprivation.
The countries where we are working with children dying from easily preventable
diseases tend to be amongst the poorest in the world. The UK is one of
the richest countries in the world and children should not be growing up
missing out on basic essentials with their parents skipping meals and in the
most extreme cases going hungry so their children can eat. We are working to
break the vicious cycle which keeps people poor - generation after generation,
because every child born in to poverty is losing their chance of a full and
productive life. It is never the child’s fault.

However, we
are an international charity and work in over 120 countries with some of the
world's most vulnerable children. The majority of our work is overseas in
developing countries. This is where the majority of the funds we receive are
spent and we will continue to work with the poorest children across the world.
This reflects our position as a charity for all children, everywhere.

I would
also like to take this opportunity to thank you for all the support you have
given in the past, which will have made such a positive difference to
children’s lives. I do hope that you may still be able to continue to support
our important work in the future. If you do have any further comments to add,
please do not hesitate to contact me on 020 7012 6400 or email
supporter.care@savethechildren.org.uk.

How can you
possibly claim “It is simply not the case that this is a political campaign”
and, in the very next sentence, say: “Child poverty is an issue which all
political parties need to act urgently on”?

I really do
resent the idea that you are squandering money in this country when there is
real, genuine, murderous poverty in other parts of the world. I think it is a
disgrace.

How many
children on the point of death could have been saved by the money you have
already wasted simply on publicising this campaign?

Their
response:

Dear
Nigel

Thank
you for your email. I am sorry that it has taken longer than I would like to
reply to you.

Save
the Children is an apolitical organisation and as such we are not motivated by political
affiliations. We will always act based on the needs of children, working to
ensure that this mandate is carried out regardless of the political or cultural
circumstances. However, in
order to achieve this mandate it is necessary to work with national
authorities, including governments and politicians, as they have the power to
make the big changes that children need. Therefore, as mentioned we are calling
on all political parties to act. We carry out campaigning and advocacy
work because this tackles root causes, rather than just responding to the
immediate need.

When a
government takes an action towards supporting the needs of children we applaud
that action and likewise we challenge decisions which have a negative impact.
Last year, we undertook a massive campaign for a boost in vaccine funding from
world leaders. Leaders from around the world gathered at a summit for the
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation in London. They had to decide whether or not to
fill a $3.7 billion funding gap that would provide vaccines for 250 million of
the world's poorest children. As a result of our campaigning, pressure and
advocacy work and the hard work and determination of our amazing supporters, a
fantastic $4.34 billion was secured. This will save 4 million children's lives,
which I hope you agree is a phenomenal achievement. More information on this
can be found on the following link http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/vaccines-work.
You may also like to read about our recent successes in encouraging David
Cameron to hold a Hunger
Summit during the Olympics, which will also be in your latest edition of ‘Children
Now.’ We made positive comments on both of these outcomes not because of any
political prejudice or sympathy, but purely for the reason that this funding
and attention will have a dramatically positive impact on the lives of millions
of children.

We also
undertake campaigning and advocacy work overseas. For example, in Sierra
Leone 1.5 million children and their mothers now have access to free
healthcare after an announcement made by the government of Sierra Leone in
September 2010 and implemented from April 2011 following efforts from our
advocacy and campaigns team which highlighted the plight of mothers and
children who were not using health services due to user fees.

Save the
Children has worked in the UK
for over 90 years and throughout our history we have made huge breakthroughs
for children. For example, following a report by Save the Children on the
importance of school meals for children’s nutrition and development, school
meals and milk became free. Today, over half of children living in poverty live
in households where at least one parent works. Currently the cost of childcare
is high – on average £177 a week – so there is little money left over for other
living costs. Save the Children is campaigning for more government childcare
support to make work pay for the poorest families and we are also encouraging
more employers to pay the Living Wage which would give families the ability to
provide the essentials for their children,

These are just a few
examples of what Save the Children have called for in order to make sure that
government policies do what is best for the interest of children. By having no
political affiliations we can be critical of government policies, both here and
overseas in order to improve the lives of children all around the world. You
have also mentioned that you are concerned about the money which is being spent
on our programmes in the UK and other activities and you are very welcome to
read a thorough breakdown on how we raise and spend our money by downloading
our latest Annual
Report from our website. If you would prefer a hard copy of this, please do
provide me with your full address and postcode and I will put one in the post
for you.

Thank you
again for getting in touch with us and for sharing your concerns with us.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

When the first Coalition Transport Secretary got the job he
declared: “We will end the war on motorists.”

That was Philip Hammond. He stayed in the job 17 months –
something of a record for a transport minister – before becoming Defence
Secretary and being replaced by Justine Greening.

She lasted less than a year and she was so busy worrying
about Heathrow Airport, the West Coast Main Line and the high-speed train from
London to Birmingham she may not even have noticed the war is about to break
out again.

Perhaps the new man in the job, Patrick McLoughlin, will
do something to prevent it becoming too bloody. But don’t hold your breath.

Motorists will be under the cosh once more when the
Government hands over new powers to local councils outside London to impose fines for a range of petty
misdemeanours.

In 2004, London
councils won the right to fine motorists for offences like driving in a bus
lane or encroaching on a yellow box.

And what fun they have had ever since. Drivers in London coughed up £50
million in fines last year alone as 800,000 of them fell foul of the council
transport snoops. Please note, that doesn’t include the £300 million they make
in parking fines.

Now greedy councils up and down the country think
they can boost their tax-raising activities by whacking new £60 fines on
unsuspecting drivers.

It’s a nice little earner, especially when some
mistakes are induced by the confusion caused by the councils themselves when
they tinker with the road system.

In two-miles of Birmingham road, for instance, there are
three stretches of bus lane. One is out of bounds to cars all day, another
until 9am, the third to 10am.

Confused? You will be when you fall foul of the
council CCTV and get a nasty little letter in the post demanding money with
menaces.

It is true some drivers – not you and me, obviously – are a menace to other
road-users and we’d all be happier if they were priced off the roads.

But I wouldn’t trust the average local council to discriminate between
really abominable, inconsiderate, selfish so-and-sos and the rest of us.

This is just a money-making exercise, another way of raising taxes. Already
the terrible 20 councils are talking to companies selling number recognition
cameras.

The Big Brother State has got your number and it knows where you live.

This will all be justified in the name of road safety but in reality the
unblinking eye of the CCTV camera will track your every manoeuvre and minor
mistake.

Mr Hammond may have declared a truce in the Government’s war on motorists
but that hasn’t stopped councils from pursuing the fight with all the resources
at their disposal.

One of the obvious results is that we are wary of driving in and out of
town or city centres. If we need to go shopping, it’s cheaper and wiser to try
somewhere out of town.

So, on the one hand, councils wring their hands about the decline in
traditional shopping areas while, on the other, councils hasten their demise by
making life miserable for motorists.

Why bother to drive into a town centre when you can buy what you want out
of town in a shopping area where they don’t charge you for parking – let alone
fine you a fortune for over-staying your welcome?

And why run the risk of falling foul of a bus lane or a yellow-box junction
when you know the Big Brother is itching to land you with a £60 shopping tax?

Giving councils more power would be a disaster. It will just drive out
economic activity – shoppers, workers, businesses, anyone who could steer clear
of these predators would do so.

Of course, one excuse for all this is that the councils want to force us
out of our cars and onto public transport.

They claim it’s greener and we’ve all got to do our bit to reverse global
warming (you know, the sort of climate change which – they keep warning us –
will lead to long, hot, dry summers when the only thing that will grown in the
garden is the occasional cactus).

They
refuse to accept that, for many people, public transport is simply impractical
and, for many more, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

This time the
Government will be waging a proxy war through local councils. Strangely, 12 of
the 20 local authorities on the list of those demanding new powers are run by
the Labour Party: Birmingham, Leeds,
Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle,
Nottingham, Plymouth, Reading,
Salford, Sheffield, Southampton and Oxford.

Of the others,
Lib-Dems run Bristol, Cambridge,
Portsmouth and Bath
and South East Somerset while the Greens run Brighton.

Only three Tory councils want to pursue this vendetta:
Southend on Sea, Guildford and Canterbury.

Yet a
Conservative-led Government is happy to encourage these money-grabbing authorities
down the path of self-destruction.

It may seem reassuring that, in the West Midlands, only Birmingham seems to want
these powers.

But be warned: The Department for Transport has written to
all the other councils in Britain
inviting them to leap on the bandwagon too.

I can’t help thinking this is a policy in urgent need of an
immediate U-turn, even if it’s in violation of the Green Cross Code.

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Bad news: Justine Greening becomes yet another Transport
Secretary to last less than a year in the job. The average over several decades
is 11 months in post. Now what for the appalling follies that are HS2 and
Heathrow expansion?

Ken Clarke to have some sort of economic overview? A sinecure,
maybe, but for this Euromaniac to have any sort of a role which could have an
effect on our relations with the EU is fraught with danger.

Andrew Lansley goes from Health – both good and bad. Good
because his alleged reforms are a fiasco, bad because after all that agonising
Cameron plainly has no faith in them. Can we expect the whole thing to be
ditched now?

Maria Miller gets to be Minister for Free Tickets. Lucky
her. Also good news that she happens to be a woman. That’s how to get top jobs
in this administration.

Caroline Spelman loses her job. Even being a woman couldn’t
save her.

David Laws gets a Government job. Good news for anyone
tempted to nick money from the taxpayer: Fraud pays.

What's the point of it all when George Osborne and Vince Cable stay put?

Friday, August 31, 2012

Whoopee-doo. The boss of a failing chain of CD shops is taking over as boss
of a failing chain of newspapers. Nothing succeeds like failure.

Simon Fox ran away from HMV earlier this month straight into the arms of
Trinity Mirror.

When Mr Fox joined HMV its shares traded at more than 160p. Now they are
just a few pennies each.

He sold Waterstones for £53 million and the Hammersmith Apollo for £32
million but profits under his tenure have fallen from £80 million to minus £10
million. And the company has debts of £168 million.

It’s not all Mr Fox’s fault, of course. Sales of music, originally the
staple diet of HMV, have all gone on-line (assuming the music is actually
purchased, of course).

The company has tried to find other ways of ensuring its survival but it’s
still closing shops all over the country.

So the wise people at Trinity Mirror have recruited the cunning Mr Fox to
run their newspaper group, a company which has not exactly covered itself in
glory during a dismal decade under the sly Mrs Bailey.

While she was raking in the money, the company was doing the opposite. Her
decade wiped out 90 per cent of the value of the shares.

Again, this is partly because of the impact of the internet, though not by
any means exclusively.

Trinity Mirror shareholders, employees, readers, advertisers (and
pensioners like me) must be delighted to discover that the company’s solution
to its woes is to bring in someone with so much experience of managing decline.

I notice the
latest newspaper circulation figures show the Birmingham Mail is selling 42,252
copies a day.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

What exactly does Nick Clegg think he would achieve if he were ever to be let loose on the nation's finances and impose a wealth tax?

Soaking the rich may seem like a simple solution to the country's financial woes and you could even argue that, if we are indeed, "all in it together", there is some merit in bringing this home to the extremely well-off.

They have, after all, remained relatively immune from the consequences of the banking crash and the Labour Government's spending splurge.

But the rich really are different. If they don't want to pay taxes, they don't have to. They can escape any noose the plodding Mr Clegg might tie for them.

A tax on the rich would simply encourage the wealthy to flee the country. They would take their millions elsewhere.

As a result, the economy would suffer even more than it is suffering already.

I must say I thought the politics of envy went out of fashion a generation ago but clearly I was wrong, it is alive and well and gnawing at the innards of the Liberal Democratic Party.

The solution to this country's woeful Government spending crisis does not lie with squeezing more money out of the well-off - even assuming, which I sincerely doubt, that they would hang around long enough to allow the selves to be squeezed.

The solution requires lower taxes, not higher ones, coupled with a real attack on public spending, not the half-hearted and pointless pretence put up by Chancellor George Osborne and his Lib-Dem sidekick Danny Alexander.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

I was standing in a jam-packed Chiltern Railways train to London
the day Virgin lost its franchise torun
the West Coast Main Line.

I wasn't travelling on Sir Richard
Branson's route because it is too expensive. Though, to be fair, they usually
have enough seats to go round.

When an elderly lady joined the train at
Banbury I felt obliged to give up my seat even though the carriage was full of
texting teenagers.

There was also one youth hogging two
seats – one for his expansive posterior, the other for his expensive guitar.

He didn't have a ticket for his musical
instrument (I asked) and refused to shift it. Naturally the railway staff
steered clear of our train, where at least a dozen passengers were standing in
my coach alone.

Such is life on Britain's
railways.

Yet rail travel is at its most popular
since the golden age of steam in the 1920s, despite the high fares.

It's a strange business, though: part
public service, part profitable enterprise.

Weep no tears for Sir Richard Branson as
he rages over losing the West Coast Main Line franchise. The service wasn't
particularly good and it was astonishingly expensive.

Our railways are there for capitalists
like Sir Richard to exploit. Squeeze as much cash as they can out the
passengers and gullible Governments and walk away if things go wrong.

That's what happened on the East Coast
Main Line where National Express, promising to pay£1.4 billion to the
Government, soon handed back the keys because it couldn't make a profit.

Sir Richard claims FirstGroup has
over-bid for the West Coast line, won't be able to meet its obligations and its
service will eventually hit the buffers.

FirstGroup says it will pay the
Government £13.3 billion or so over the 16-year life of the franchise compared
with Virgin's best offer of £11 billion.

Sir Richard's career has been sustained
on a diet of sour grapes so we needn't take his moans too seriously.

But the episode does reveal once again
how bizarre our railway business has become.

When British Rail was privatised, the
Government offered franchises to run different routes.

But the infrastructure all owned by a
separate company, Railtrack, which was scandalously nationalised in 2002 and
became Network Rail.

This system doesn't make any sense.
Railway companies should be responsible for the whole travelling experience
from safety to sandwiches.

Instead of raffling off its most
important railway line on the off-chance it will bring in a few billion quid
over a decade and a half, the Government should sell the West Coast line
completely.

Let Virgin or FirstGroup or some other
entrepreneurial business take on the whole thing –track, stations, signals,
trains, services, the lot.

At the same time, it should scrap all
controls over the cost of travelling by train and encourage more competition.

At the moment, fares rise according to
Government decree and taxpayers subsidise the entire system by about £4 billion
a year.

Incredibly, this is – after inflation –
four times as much as we used to spend in the bad old British Rail era.

To reduce its subsidy the Government has
decreed fares must rise by 6.2 per cent next year. Some commuters will see
their fares rise 11 per cent or more.

This has caused the usual outcry but it's
actually a very good thing. There can be no sense in a two-way traffic in money
between the Government and the rail companies.

More to the point, most of the price
controls are imposed to keep down the cost of commuting in and out of London which, of all the
places in Britain,
does not need a commuter subsidy.

Nobody is forced to work in Londonyet
they get paid extra for this dubious privilege.

Commuters should pay the full, hideous
price of travelling to the office instead of expecting the rest of us to
subsidise London's
workforce.

An end to rail subsidies in the South
East would benefit the rest of Britain
by persuading employers, and their staff, there are better places to live and
work.

Commuting into London
is an unpleasant experience which involves standing in a sweaty coach with your
nose pressed up against someone else's arm-pit as the train lurches, jerks and
sways from station to station.

Of course with so many Tory MPs in the
South East and London Mayor Boris Johnson now the most popular politician in
the country, we can expect a battle to protect these subsidies.

But it can’t possibly make sense for the
taxpayer to pay for London’s
commuters.

This doesn’t resolve the basic problem of
flogging off franchises in the hope the winners will actually deliver the
revenue they’re promising the Treasury.

We need real rail reform. The alternative
is a system lurching from one crisis to the next.

And there is something bizarre about the
fact that, as revenge, Sir Richard is planning to introduce flights from Manchester to London
for £95 – about £200 and two hours less than the second class rail fare.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Yesterday I argued that it was absurd the British press was
the only section of the world’s media prevented from showing the naked pictures
of Prince Harry – so congratulations to The Sun for breaking ranks.

The pictures themselves are beside the point. The issue is
whether our newspapers – cowed and fearful in the face of the Leveson inquiry –
should be able to do their job without fear or favour.

Sadly both fear and favour play their part in the shaping of
tomorrow’s papers and always will.

But when the State tries to suppress information which is
available to the rest of the world – and to anyone in this country with access
to the internet – it is necessary for someone to expose the absurdity of the
Government’s position.